by Ed Gorman
* * *
By nightfall, two different types of medical attention had been visited upon Mae. Originally, the Captain opted for cutting the wound open and sucking the venom out. But later in the day a master sergeant convinced the Captain that granny medicine was worth trying, and so the bite was dowsed with kerosene and live chicken flesh was used to supposedly draw even more of the venom out.
Now, near night, Mae lay in a tent, the light of a kerosene lantern flickering across the walls.
The men had been thunderstruck by Mae's wound. It was all they talked about at dinner, and afterward they hovered near her tent, shaking their heads and saying silent prayers. To Army regulars, the Captain's daughter had represented both good humor and a certain sense of democracy. She'd been cordial with them all.
Monroe just stared into the fire.
He hadn't eaten lunch or dinner.
Every few minutes he'd raise his head and look past the edge of the campfire to the tent where Mae was.
He still could not believe he could have been so reckless.
He still could not believe that the snake had actually struck her.
"You all right?" the sergeant said after coming back from the bushes where he'd taken his nightly purging.
"Yessir."
"You didn't hunt them snakes down tonight."
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"Feelin' sickly, I guess."
The sergeant said, "Expect you to be huntin' them snakes tomorrow night."
"Yessir."
An hour later, most of the company turned in. Soon men were snoring and whispering things to themselves in their sleep.
Monroe had gotten into his sleeping roll but he was anything but asleep. He just kept thinking of Mae. Of how much he loved her. Of what a fool he'd been.
Around midnight there was a wail, a distinctive sound a man makes when he's been overcome with sorrow. The sound came from the Captain's tent.
He did not have to wonder who had made the sound, or why.
A few minutes later, there came weeping, weeping so unabashed it sounded as if the Captain would never recover.
And then there was silence. Plain, awful silence.
Around two, the campfire guttering, everybody else seemingly asleep, Monroe slipped out of his bedroll and headed down for the riverbank.
He didn't put his boots on. He didn't need them anymore.
In the moonlight, the river was silver and curiously quiet now.
Monroe lay down on the bank, just where Mae had been this morning, not far at all from the underbrush and the rattlers.
He didn't have long to wait.
Nor did he move, not even give the slightest jerk, when the snake was upon him, filling his veins with venom.
Oh, Mae, he thought; oh, Mae.
In the morning they found him just where she'd been, the body of him anyway.
The spirit of him was elsewhere, perhaps at last with his one true love's.
Deathman
The night before he killed a man, Hawes always followed the same ritual.
He arrived in town late afternoon—in this case, a chill shadowy autumn afternoon—found the best hotel, checked in, took a hot bath in a big metal tub, put on a fresh suit so dark it hinted at the ministerial, buffed his black boots till they shone, and then went down to the lobby in search of the best steak in town.
Because this was a town he'd worked many times before, he knew just which restaurant to choose, a place called "Ma's Gaslight Inn." Ma had died last year of a venereal disease (crazed as hell, her friends said, in her last weeks, talking to dead people and drawing crude pictures of her tombstone again and again on the wall next to her death bed.)
Dusk and chill rain sent townspeople scurrying for home, the clatter of wagons joining the clop of horses in retreat from the small, prosperous mountain town.
Hawes strode the boardwalk alone, a short and burly man handsome except for his acne-pitted cheeks. Even in his early forties, his boyhood taint was obvious.
Rain dripped in fat silver beads from the overhangs as he walked down the boardwalk toward the restaurant. He liked to look in the shop windows when they were closed this way, look at the female things—a lace shawl, a music box with a ballerina dancing atop, a ruby necklace so elegant it looked as if it had been plucked from the fat white neck of a duchess only moments ago.
Without his quite wanting them to, all these things reminded him of Sara. Three years they'd been married until she'd learned his secret, and then she'd been so repelled she invented a reason to visit her mother back in Ohio, and never again returned. He was sure she had remarried—he'd received divorce papers several years ago—and probably even had children by now. Children—and a house with a creek in back—had been her most devout wish.
He quit looking in the shop windows. He now looked straight ahead. His boot heels were loud against the wet boards. The air smelled cold and clean enough to put life in the lungs of the dead.
The player piano grew louder the closer to the restaurant he got; and then laughter and the clink of glasses.
Standing there, outside it all, he felt a great loneliness, and now when he thought of Sara he was almost happy. Having even sad memories was better than no memories at all.
He walked quickly to the restaurant door, pushed it open and went inside.
He needed to be with people tonight.
* * *
He was halfway through his steak dinner (fat pats of butter dripping golden down the thick sides of the meat and potatoes sliced and fried in tasty grease) when the tall man in the gray suit came over.
At this time the restaurant was full, low-hanging Rochester lamps casting small pools of light into the ocean of darkness. Tobacco smoke lay a haze over everything, seeming to muffle conversations. An old Negro stood next to the double doors of the kitchen, filling water glasses and handing them to the big-hipped waitresses hurrying in and out the doors. The rest of the house was packed with the sort of people you saw in mining towns—wealthy miners and wealthy men who managed the mines for eastern bosses; and hard, scrubbed-clean working men with their hard, scrubbed-clean wives out celebrating a birthday or an anniversary at the place where the rich folks dine.
"Excuse me."
Hawes looked up. "Yes?"
"I was wondering if you remembered me."
Hawes looked him over. "I guess."
"Good. Then you mind if I sit down?"
"You damn right I do. I'm eating."
"But last time you promised that—"
Hawes dismissed the man with a wave of a pudgy hand. "Didn't you hear me? I'm eating. And I don't want to be interrupted."
"Then after you're finished eating—?"
Hawes shrugged. "We'll see. Now get out of here and leave me alone."
The man was very young, little more than a kid, twenty-one, twenty-two at most, and now he seemed to wither under the assault of Hawes' intentional and practiced rudeness.
"I'll make sure you're done eating before I bother you again."
Hawes said nothing. His head was bent to the task of cutting himself another piece of succulent steak.
The tall man went away.
* * *
"It's me again. Richard Sloane."
"So I see."
The tall man looked awkward. "You're smoking a cigar."
"So I am."
"So I take it you're finished eating?"
Hawes almost had to laugh, the sonofabitch looked so young and nervous. They weren't making them tough, the way they'd been in the frontier days. "I suppose I am."
"Then may I sit down?"
Hawes pointed a finger at an empty chair. The young man sat down.
"You know what I want?" He took out a pad and pencil the way any good journalist would.
"Same thing you people always want."
"How it feels after you do it."
Hawes smiled. "You mean do I feel guilty? Do I have nightmares?"
The young
man looked uncomfortable with Hawes' playful tone. "I guess that's what I mean, yes."
Hawes stared at the young man.
"You ever seen one, son?"
The youngster looked as if he was going to object to "son" but then changed his mind. "Two. One when I was a little boy with my uncle and one last year."
"Did you like it?"
"I hated it. It scared me the way people acted, it made me sick. They were—celebrating. It was like a party."
"Yes, some of them get that way sometimes."
Hawes had made a study of it all so he considered telling Sloane here about Tom Galvin, an Irishman of the sixteenth century who had personally hanged more than 1,600 men. Galvin believed in giving the crowd a show, especially with men accused of treason. These he not only hanged but oftentimes dismembered, throwing arms and legs to the crazed onlookers. Some reports had it that some of the crowds actually ate of the bloodied limbs tossed to them.
"You ever hang two at once?"
"The way they did in Nevada last year?" Hawes smirked and shook his head. "Not me, son. I'm not there to put on a show. I'm there to kill a man." He took a drag on his cigar. "I don't want to give my profession a bad name."
God knew that executioners, as a group, were unreliable. In seventeenth-century England, the executioner himself was put in a jail cell for eight days preceding the hanging—so officials would know he'd show up on time and sober.
"Will you sleep well tonight?"
"Very well, I hope."
"You won't think about tomorrow?"
"Not very seriously."
"How the man will look?"
"No."
"Or how the trap will sound when it opens?"
"No."
"Or how his eyes will bulge and his tongue will bloat?"
Hawes shook his head. "I know what you want, son. You want a speech about the terrible burden of being an executioner." He tapped his chest. "But I don't have it in me."
"Then it isn't a burden?"
"No, son, it isn't. It's just what I do. The way some men milk cows and other men fix buggies—I hang people. It's just that simple."
The young man looked disappointed. They always did when Hawes told them this. They wanted melodrama—they wanted regret and remorse and a tortured soul.
Hawes decided to give him the story about the woman. It wasn't the whole story, of course, but the part he always told was just what frontier newspapermen were looking for.
"There was a blond woman once."
"Blond?"
"So blond it almost hurt your eyes to look at her hair in the sunlight. It was spun gold."
"Spun gold; God."
"And it was my duty to hang her."
"Oh, shit."
"The mayor of the town said I'd be hanging a woman but I never dreamt she'd be so beautiful."
"Did you hang her anyway?"
"I had to, son. It's my job."
"Did she cry?"
"She was strong. She didn't cry and her legs didn't give out when she was climbing the scaffold stairs. You know, I've seen big strapping men just collapse on those stairs and have to be carried all the way up. And some of them foul their pants. I can smell the stench when I'm pulling the white hood over their eyes."
"But she was strong?"
"Very strong. She walked right over to the trap door and stood on top of it and folded her hands very primly in front of her. And then she just waited for me to come over there."
"What was she guilty of?"
"She'd taken a lover that spring, and when her husband found out he tried to kill her. But instead she killed him. The jury convicted her of first-degree murder."
"It doesn't sound like first-degree to me."
"Me either, son. But I'm the hangman; I'm not the judge."
"And so you hanged her?"
"I did."
"Didn't you want to call it off?"
"A part of me did."
"Did she scream when the door dropped away?"
"She didn't say anything."
"And her neck snapped right away?"
"I made sure of that, son. I didn't want her to dangle there and strangle the way they sometimes do. So I cinched the knot extra tight. She crossed over right away. You could hear her neck break."
"This was how many years ago?"
"Ten."
"And obviously you still think about her."
It was clear now the angle the young journalist would be taking. Hangman kills beautiful woman; can't get her out of his mind these long years later. His readers would love it.
"Oh, yes, son; yes, I still think about her."
The excitement was plain on the man's young face. Hangman kills beautiful woman, can't forget her. This may just have been the best story he'd ever had.
He flipped the cover of his pad closed. "I really appreciate this."
Hawes nodded.
The young man got up, snatched his derby from the edge of the table, and walked to the rear where the press of people and smoke and clatter were overwhelming.
Hawes took the time for another two drinks and half a Cuban cigar and then went out into the rain.
* * *
The house was three blocks away, in the opposite direction of the gallows, for which Hawes was grateful. A superstitious man, he believed that looking at a gallows the night before would bring bad luck. The man would not die clean, the trap would not open, the rope would mysteriously snap—something. And so he didn't glimpse the gallows until the morning of the execution.
Hawes came this way often. This town was in the exact center of the five-hundred-mile radius he traveled as an executioner. So he came to this town three or four times a month, not just when he had somebody to hang here.
And he always came to Maude's.
Maude was the plump giggling madam who ran the town's only whorehouse. She had an agreement with the sheriff that if she kept her house a quarter mile away from town, and if she ran her place clean, meaning no black whores or no black customers, then the sheriff would leave her alone, meaning of course he would keep at bay the zealous German Lutherans who mostly made up the town. Maude gave the lawman money but not much, and every once in awhile he'd sneak up on the back porch where one of the runaway farm girls she employed would offer the sheriff her wet glistening lips.
He could hear the player piano now, Hawes could, lonely on the rainy prairie night. He wished he hadn't told that pipsqueak journalist about the blond woman because now Hawes was thinking about her again, and what had really happened that morning.
The house was a white two-story frame. In front, two horses were tied to a post, and down a ways a buggy dun stood ground-tied.
Hawes went up to the door and knocked.
Maude herself opened it. "Well, for shit's sake, girls, look who's here."
Downstairs there was a parlor, which was where the player piano was, and the girls sat on a couch and you chose them the way you did cattle at a livestock auction.
Hawes always asked for the same one. He looked at the five girls sitting there watching him. They were about what you'd expect for a midwestern prairie whorehouse, young girls quickly losing their bloom. They drank too much and laughed too loud and weren't always good about keeping themselves clean.
That was why he always asked for Lucy.
"She here, Maude?"
Maude winked at him. "Just taking a bath."
"I see."
"Won't be long." She knew his tastes, knew he didn't want to stay downstairs with the girls and the piano and the two cowboys who were giggling about which girls they'd pick. "You know the end room on the hall?"
"Right."
"Why don't you go up there and wait for her?"
"Good idea."
"You'll find some bourbon in the drawer."
"Appreciate it."
She winked at him again. "Hear you're hanging the Parsons boy in the morning."
"I never know their names."
"Well, take it from me, s
weetie, when he used to come here he didn't tip worth a damn. Anything he gets from you, he's got coming." And then she whooped a laugh and slapped him on the back and said, "You just go right up those stairs, sweetie."
He nodded, mumbling a thank you, and turned away from her before he had to look directly at the small brown stubs of her teeth. The sight and stench of her mouth had always sickened him.
* * *
He wondered how many men had lain in this dark room. He wondered how many men had felt his loneliness. He wondered how many men had heard a woman's footsteps coming down the hall, and felt fear and shame.
Lucy opened the door. She was silhouetted in the flickering hall light. "You want me to get a lantern?"
"That's all right."
She laughed. "Never known a man who likes the dark the way you do."
She came in, closed the door behind her. She smelled of soapy bath water and jasmine. She wasn't pretty but she kept herself clean and he appreciated it.
"Should've just left my clothes off, I guess," she said. "After my bath, I mean."
He could tell she was nervous. The darkness always made her like this.
Wind and rain spattered against the window. The fingers of a dead branch scraped the glass, a curious kind of music.
She came over to the bed and stood above him. She took his hand and pressed it lightly against her sex. She was dry and warm.
"You going to move over?"
He rolled over so there was room for her. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.
As usual when they lay there, Lucy smoked a cigarette. She always hand-rolled two or three before coming to see Hawes because many times the night consisted of talk and nothing more.
"You want a drag?"
"No, thanks."
"How you doing?"
"All right, I guess."
"Hear you're going to hang a man tomorrow."
"Yes."
Next to him, she shuddered, her whole naked skinny body. "Forgive me for saying so, Hawes, but I just don't know how you can do it."
"You've said that before."
She laughed again. "Yes, I guess I have."
They lay there silent for a time, just the wind and the rain pattering the roof, just the occasional glow of her cigarette as she dragged on it, just his own breathing.
